


spirit

by michpat6



Series: aftermath [3]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: F/M, Kind Of A Weird One, give me some past life confusion or give me death, shorter than usual but it's a small moment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:01:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27820429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/michpat6/pseuds/michpat6
Summary: She looks down at it, turns it over, and examines the back, at the holes meant for the wearer to see through and at the string he added so he could wear it. She smiles, puts it on, and faces him. He can’t see her eyes, instead looking at the gigantic yellow ones of the mask, but he knows she’s looking at him. “How do I look?”
Relationships: Link & Zelda (Legend of Zelda), Link/Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Series: aftermath [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2033743
Comments: 7
Kudos: 142





	spirit

The moon is falling. He is a man, a _Hero_ , in a boy’s helpless body and the moon is falling, its eyes a demon’s, and all he can do is raise the ocarina to his lips as a strange child wearing that mask he found in the ruins of the garrison by Lake Kolomo points at him and laughs and laughs-

_You’ve suffered a terrible fate, haven’t you?_

Yes.

“Link!”

He’s standing in the middle of their shared inn room. He’s in his underwear and his hands are raised to his mouth, poised like they were in his dream, as if he were trying to play that ocarina.

It is their third night in Kakariko, and the first he’s had something like this happen in a long time.

Zelda’s soft hands are gripping his bare shoulders, her hair messy from the pillows, and-

“I woke you,” he states.

She sighs with what sounds like relief, running a hand through her hair and letting him go. His skin burns where she touched him. “It’s fine. I woke up and you were just standing here, staring into space and humming some strange song.”

“Humming?” he doesn’t know any songs. “Humming what?”

She hums whatever it was, a short tune that repeats itself twice before lifting and sinking at the end, and he recognizes it. He doesn’t know how. It’s like there’s a word on the tip of his tongue, and the back of his sword hand tingles. How does he recognize it?

_If something should happen to you…remember this song._

“I’ve never heard it before,” he says, telling the truth, but why does he feel like he’s lying? “Did…Did I say anything?”

_This reminds me of us._

“No,” she stares into his eyes, sits on the edge of the bed. The room only has the one, and Link has been sleeping on the floor despite Zelda’s protests. “But your eyes were different.”

_That’s_ something he’s heard before. “Different how?”

“They were…” she keeps staring at him, and he wonders if she’s looking into his soul. “Older, I think. It was like you were someone else.”

Her gaze drifts to the Master Sword that leans against the wall next to the bed.

“That’s happened before,” he confesses, staring at the sword that seals the darkness. “When I pulled the sword, the Great Deku Tree told me he saw a thousand lifetimes pass behind my eyes. He told me the first time I pulled it, Before, I was a child. He told me…”

Zelda waits.

“He said I wasn’t myself when I arrived. I walked through the Lost Woods like I had gone to Korok Forest every day. He said when I faced him, I had the eyes of someone he hadn’t seen since he was a sprout.” Link swallows. “He said I had the eyes of the Hero of Time.”

The Master Sword hums at the utterance of the name.

The princess straightens her spine. “One of your past lives.”

He nods. “I…It just happens, sometimes. I get these flashes of memory that I know don’t fit with what I’ve been told. I don’t know if they’re all from his era or not. The Great Deku Tree told me that no one, not even him, knows anything about the past Heroes and their quests. It’s been too long, and he was a newborn when the Hero of Time disappeared. I’m the first to appear before him since.”

Zelda’s eyes are alight with interest. He remembers, from the slate, that this look in her eyes always accompanies an experiment, some explanation of science that he can’t understand. He knows that she is a researcher before she is a princess, but this is the first time he’s seen it for himself. There’s a little more meat on her bones, her appetite making a slow return, and from what he knows she hasn’t had any nightmares, so the circles beneath her eyes have lessened. She is still “weak”, but he has never seen her more alive. “What did you see?”

He goes to his bag of “stuff”, and pulls out the heart-shaped mask, sitting next to her on the bed and giving it to her. “A child wearing this mask was laughing as the moon fell. Monsters ignore me when I wear it.”

She looks down at it, turns it over, and examines the back, at the holes meant for the wearer to see through and at the string he added so he could wear it. She smiles, puts it on, and faces him. He can’t see her eyes, instead looking at the gigantic yellow ones of the mask, but he knows she’s looking at him. “How do I look?”

He laughs. The mask is too big for her head, engulfing her face, and when it droops he knows she’s blind. “Ridiculous.”

“Your turn,” she takes it off and hands it back, excited. “Put it on.”

He does, and she laughs at him, too.

“So scary,” she teases. “I’m shaking.”

She’s happy, Link thinks. She’s a woman displaced in time, everyone she knows except for him and Impa are dead, and she was a prisoner fighting for her life for a century, but right now she’s happy. Zelda’s happy with him.

She’s not smiling at him with the strength of the sun, not yet, but he’ll take whatever rays peek through the clouds.

**Author's Note:**

> I always thought the whole reincarnation thing was a super interesting part of the Zelda lore, and have always wanted a game to go more in depth about like...what that does to Link specifically, and then I remembered that Majora's Mask is in breath of the wild and my brain went "!!!"


End file.
